Most people are only concerned with the weather where they live. However, some Iowa State students will be watching the skies of different cities around the country today as part of the National Collegiate Weather Forecasting Contest.

The contest, which is run by Penn State, starts today, with 28 ISU students competing against 489 students from other academic institutions including Florida State, the University of Massachusetts, Purdue and the University of Arizona.

“This is good practice to learn how to forecast without too much pressure,” said Damon Shaw, senior in meteorology and participant in the contest. “I plan on getting into TV after I graduate, so learning how to forecast is very important.”

William Gallus, assistant professor of geological and atmospheric sciences, said students will have to figure out the maximum and minimum temperatures for each city as well as the precipitation for a 24-hour period.

“The contest will improve their geography because it will force them to look at the terrain surrounding the city,” he said.

The students will take their forecasts and enter them through a Web site.

“The Web application stores their information in a database system and outputs it in a friendly format,” said Daryl Herzmann, junior in meteorology.

Herzmann developed the computer interface for the contest for the ISU participants.

“The users will have to enter four forecasts a week for each city,” he said. “The students will forecast for eight cities total; each city will get eight forecasts.”

Students around the country have been taking part in the contest for about 18 years, Gallus said. ISU got involved in it again as a way to help educate meteorology students.

“We won’t just learn how to forecast for Iowa, but for many different parts of the country,” Shaw said. “This is important because who knows where you will end up after you graduate.”

The contest divides the forecasters into four groups: freshmen and sophomores, juniors and seniors, graduate students and faculty and staff.

Students and faculty compete in their own categories, as well as overall school scores.

Gallus participated in the contest when he was an undergraduate and also as a graduate student.

He will be joining his students in the contest as a faculty member.

“We have Dr. Gallus on our side and some pretty good student forecasters, so I think we will do pretty well,” Shaw said. “We want to prove that Iowa State is a good forecasting school.”